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How Chess Helps Decision Making in Business

Chess is a mental simulation to strengthen your ability to act and decide on whether something is an asset or a liability.

In other words, chess is a game that uses strategies of decision making to decide whether something is serving you or not. This is an essential skillset to have in life and in chess.

Simple, Effective Decision Making Formula for Chess and Business Success

When you create your own strategy during the “opening” portion of your game, you are arranging potential results based on your foundation and combination of pieces.

But there is more to the story. Your initial strategy is a reflection of your own internal potential as well as your response to your opponent’s strategy.

As the game evolves and develops, certain pieces become more valuable (or less valuable) because of their integration with your overall plan, primarily as a response to your opponent’s plan.

Playing the role of the entrepreneur, the business owner, the big cheese, it’s all about potential opportunity and acting on the ideas by bringing them into your systems and vehicles of value to your customers, prospects, community, market, partners, team members, friends, family, or humanity as a whole.

So in the essence of chess it is essential to become aware of the influence’s of your opponent’s strategy while simultaneously integrating your defensive and offensive approach to deconstructing your opponent while advancing and evolving your own strategy.

The good news here is that all learning and experiences are helping you build your internal strategic value (mental asset). Similar to business, when you strike oil and hit the bullseye of opportunity, you can go with that value and deploy it by replicating the strategy and establish a wider and deeper impact in markets.

Such formula is the same with chess success. When you develop a strong strategy in one game, you can deploy that strategy in other games thus replicating the potential of your results.

Here is what is comes down to.

Creating an asset that moves you forward is a kick-awesome strategy for winning chess games and in business.

Often times assets are hidden potentials. For example pawns. There are 8 individual pawns on each side and each serve a basic purpose in the beginning.

But as the game evolves their potential to becoming stronger and stronger becomes more apparent.

Pawns form the foundation for the rest of the assets to be deployed. They are simple in nature and have very limited and specific ways of attacking.

There are some exceptions but for the most part they are consistent, stable, secure, firm, and strong – especially when they work together.

This analogy in chess can be applied to multiple aspects of life and business:

sales

customer service

management team

technical specialists

marketing and advertising

creatives and promotional materials

When you have multiple assets working together they form a strong foundation for other assets to come into the game. But, when a pawn gets out of alignment with the team, they can quickly shift to liabilities and need to be dealt with because they can break the foundation of the core vision and direction.

Decision making power! You might need to eliminate that liability.

The other great thing about pawns is that they always have a forward moving mentality (pawns cannot move backwards).

So there is always forward progress and always an alignment with each other and with the next wave of assets.

One of the most profound metaphors of the pawn with the business is that pawns have the potential, although simple in nature, to become the greatest asset on the board! Pawns can become a Queen.

When a pawn makes its way to the other side (your opponents starting row), they can turn into the most powerful and essential piece in the game. And you can get eight of them (or a total of nine if you keep your starting Queen).

So one little pawn can determine the entire direction and course of the game (end game strategy).

The next time you play chess maybe you will look at pawns differently or the next time you look at your business, maybe you will reflect and contemplate the seemingly most basic and simple assets of your business as multiple players that form the foundation, the potential for them to become the most power assets.

To summarize and recap…

Using the formula of evaluating assets and liabilities is essential to winning in chess and business,

Never underestimate the power and potential of seemingly simple yet stable and firm assets,

Always be moving forward even if its small steps one square at a time,

Creating a firm foundation (team) can help deliver stronger assets and solid strategies.

About Andy

I use Chess as a teaching analogy to help people sharpen their mind so they can get results faster, with less stress, and have a lot more fun!

I have been particularly successful with internet business owners in the coaching, consulting, tech startup, hospitality, SaaS, and high-ticket professional service industries who are concerned with time freedom, market impact disruption, continuity retention and utmost value contribution to their customers and community.

Click here to learn more about me and how I use Chess perspectives to help business owners with personal development and entrepreneurship.

My New Chess & Business Book

Download my new Chess eBook, The 7 Advanced Chess Strategies for Winning Entrepreneurs where I relate chess strategies to business and personal growth. This book is perfect for anyone wanting to focus better, improve their decision making skills, and get more results through productive action.